Murder in Bloom (24 page)

‘They didn’t need to,’ said Lewis. ‘They know what happened.’

‘What?’ asked Libby, her stomach sinking in anticipation.

‘It was what your mate said. The sailing club.’

‘
I
suggested the sailing club in the first place,’ said Libby, indignation momentarily overcoming apprehension.

‘Whatever,’ said Lewis. ‘Anyway, they went to have a look.’

‘We know that,’ said Libby, exasperated. ‘We were there.’

‘They found something.’

‘Oh, God, what?’

‘A boat was missing.’

Relief whooshed through Libby and she sat down abruptly. ‘I thought you were going to say they’d found her body.’

‘That’s what I thought. Anyway, they reckon she must have collected her bags, shot down there and taken off.’

‘To where, though? Have they managed to trace her?’

‘Not as far as I know. I don’t understand any of it.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Libby. ‘How do they know she took the boat?’

‘They found something of hers, I think. Something she dropped?’

‘Oh, please,’ said Libby. ‘Not a cigarette end, I suppose? With a distinctive lipstick colour on the end?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ Lewis sounded bewildered. ‘Anyway, she didn’t smoke.’

Libby sighed. ‘It was a joke, Lewis,’ she said. ‘You know, like in detective stories.’

‘Oh.’

‘So you’ve got no idea what it was?’

‘I’ve told you, no. Look, I gotta go. Katie and me are going shopping this morning, and I might pop back up to London for a few days. Ad and Mog can carry on here. They know what to do – at least Mog does.’

‘Right,’ said Libby. ‘Will Katie go to London, too?’

‘Yeah. She can go back to her flat and come to me during the days.’

‘Have you got a flat in London, then?’

‘’Course I have! Only rented, see, I took it on when I first went on to
Housey Housey
, and I was going to buy something else when Creekmarsh came up.’

‘Right. Well, keep your mobile on so we can ring you if anything comes up.’

‘The police will let me know soon enough,’ said Lewis gloomily.

‘If anything
else
comes up, I meant,’ said Libby.

‘Ad’ll let me know about the garden. They’re going to plant up that little back bit next week so’s it looks pretty.’

‘Bit late in the year, isn’t it?’ said Libby.

‘How would I know?’ said Lewis. ‘Mog says they can do it, and they did it loads of times on
Housey Housey
, didn’t matter what time of year it was. And we’ve done it on my show, too.’

‘Right. I’ll talk to you soon, then, and see you when you come back,’ said Libby.

‘Yeah,’ said Lewis, sounded unconvinced. Libby was rather afraid he’d had enough of the Sarjeant and Castle investigating team.

She reported all of this to Fran in another telephone call. ‘What do you think?’ she asked finally. ‘Is it a con? Has she really disappeared on a rowing boat?’

‘There was certainly the feeling that she’d been there, although I didn’t see anything you might call evidence. It’s a pity Lewis didn’t know what they found.’

‘Could you ask Ian?’

Fran snorted. ‘Don’t be daft, Lib. Of course I can’t. Oh, and by the way, Guy invited him to the wedding. Seemed to think it was a good idea. And Jane and Terry are coming.’

‘Great,’ said Libby. ‘So it’s all organised, is it?’

‘Not the outfits. How about you and me going shopping tomorrow?’

‘It’s Saturday tomorrow! It’ll be horribly crowded.’

‘Don’t be a spoilsport,’ said Fran. ‘Go on. We could even go up to London.’

Libby thought about it, tempted. ‘OK,’ she said eventually. ‘You’re on. I’ll get Ben to take me to Canterbury to catch the train.’

‘I’ll tell you which one I’m catching from Nethergate then,’ said Fran. ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’

‘She sounded really excited,’ Libby told Ben later. ‘I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hate shopping in London.’

‘Well, I think it’ll be good for you to get away from all the murder and mayhem,’ said Ben, pouring her a whisky.

‘I think it’s got away from us,’ said Libby with a sigh. ‘We’d decided it wasn’t any of our business before Lewis called us back in, but now I think he’s had enough of it and has gone back to London. Apart from Ad still working over there, it would appear that our connection to it all has stopped.’

‘We’ll have to find you something else to keep you interested,’ said Ben, coming to sit next to her on the sofa.

‘There’s Steeple Farm,’ said Libby, ‘if Lewis is still going to take it on, or I suppose I could project manage myself if it came to it.’

‘There is,’ said Ben, ‘and there’s also your painting. You’ve been neglecting that a bit lately, haven’t you?’

‘I took some in to Guy only a week or so ago,’ said Libby, ‘but yes. I need to get going again with those. Pity it feels like churning out a production line.’

‘Just be grateful you can do it,’ said Ben. ‘It pays for all your little necessities.’

Libby raised her glass. ‘Like this, you mean?’

‘And those,’ said Ben, retrieving the battered packet of cigarettes from the log basket.

Libby sighed. ‘I will try and give them up,’ she said, ‘but I still feel resentful.’

‘Don’t do it for the government,’ said Ben, patting her hand. ‘Do it for me.’

She laughed. ‘I’ll see,’ she said. ‘And now I’d better get some supper. Adam’s gone into Canterbury with Mog, so he won’t be here.’

‘House to ourselves, have we?’ Ben leant over and blew on her neck. ‘Ought to make the most of it, then, shouldn’t we?’

So they did.

Chapter Twenty-five

FRAN AND LIBBY SPENT a tiring but ultimately successful day in London. Libby’s daughter Belinda met them for lunch, but Fran could not be persuaded to invite her own daughter Lucy.

‘She’d whine about bringing the children and then try and insist I went out to Tulse Hill to see them instead,’ she said. ‘I can do without that.’

On Sunday the weather went back to being late spring-like and stayed like it for the next few days. Adam went back to work at Creekmarsh, Mog joined him for a few hours a day and Lewis and Katie apparently stayed in London. Adam reported that no police had been seen and everything seemed to have returned to normal. Ben and Libby had another look round Steeple Farm and decided that Lewis’s interest had been fleeting and born of the circumstances at the time. They would have to go it alone. Luckily, Mog had contacts with reliable local builders, one of whom was a qualified lime plasterer and had been employed by English Heritage on restoration work in the area. He was able to make a start on the odd bits of refurbishment that would be needed, but before that Libby and Ben had to decide what extremities of bad taste would have to be ripped out.

Libby regularly pushed down the uncomfortable feeling that she was doing the wrong thing, and found herself going round her cottage talking to it. She kept reminding herself that she wasn’t selling it, and only moving into Steeple Farm as a sort of caretaker, but it didn’t make any difference.

Ben, usually sensitive to her moods, had happily accepted what he saw as the new situation and spent the evenings talking renovations. He had also thrown himself into the role of Guy’s best man, and was helping move some of Guy’s belongings and furniture into Fran’s still sparsely furnished Coastguard Cottage.

‘Don’t you mind?’ asked Libby curiously. ‘You so wanted to be on your own at first.’

‘That was at first,’ said Fran. ‘And I had a lot to work through, didn’t I? All those memories and discoveries from the past.’

‘And Ian didn’t help, did he?’

‘It wasn’t Ian’s fault,’ sighed Fran. ‘It was me. It was the novelty of having a younger man fancying me. It confused me for a bit.’

‘And he is very attractive,’ said Libby slyly.

‘Yes, he is.’ There was a short silence. ‘But not as attractive as Guy,’ Fran said eventually, and Libby smiled.

The Skeleton in the Garden case, as the media referred to it, slipped to the inside pages of the newspapers and wasn’t mentioned at all on the television news. Neither was Tony West’s murder, although the press hadn’t been told of the link between the two cases. If they had been, thought Libby, it might still have been at least page two news.

On Thursday, two weeks before Fran and Guy’s wedding and two weeks since Libby first met Lewis, Fran called Libby.

‘I know this sounds silly,’ she said, ‘but I had a dream last night.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. And I’m pretty sure it meant Cindy was in England before Sunday.’

‘Oh, Fran, that doesn’t seem very –’

‘I know what you’re going to say, Lib,’ interrupted Fran, ‘but it is based on something concrete.’

‘Her reaction when she found out he was dead, though. Lewis said she was hysterical.’

‘Yet she didn’t say anything about going to see him when she arrived at Creekmarsh, did she? Wouldn’t you have thought she would have asked if she could at least call him after Lewis told her the whole story?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Libby slowly. ‘And she didn’t, did she? You would have thought she would want to know where the money was, as it was due to be hers eventually. And the other thing was, she actually told Lewis all about knowing Tony, and him covering up the murder.’

‘Why didn’t Lewis mention it to her then?’

‘I think he thought he had, or that she already knew.’

‘Her behaviour doesn’t ring true. I’m going to try and find out a bit more.’

‘Fran! We’re out of it,’ said Libby. ‘Why do you want to do this?’

‘Because I can’t get it out of my mind. I’m going to see if I can track down any historical references to Creekmarsh.’

‘What good will that do?’ asked Libby, bewildered.

‘Hiding places,’ said Fran crisply. ‘I’ll let you know if I find anything.’

‘I’m going to look too,’ said Libby, and switching off the phone went straight to the computer.

At first, it looked as though there was little on the Internet about Creekmarsh, but by dint of following seemingly insignificant clues, she eventually chanced on a local website about villages in the area with a whole page about the village, the church and the house.

Creekmarsh Place had been built towards the end of the sixteenth century, and most of the history concerned the families through whose hands it had passed. Part of the house had been destroyed by fire in the eighteenth century and there were rumours of passages running between the church, the house and the inn, although none of these had been found, and both the church and the inn had been rebuilt during the nineteenth century, so it was unlikely that, if they ever had existed, they continued to do so now.

After an hour of following up promising-looking clues and cross-referencing with historical documents, Libby was ready to give up, when something caught her eye. There was a tunnel at Creekmarsh. Leading to an ice-house. Her heart gave a great thump in her chest just as the phone began to ring.

‘Lib?’ Fran’s voice sounded muffled.

‘Where are you?’

‘Just outside the library,’ said Fran. ‘Trying to keep my voice down. I’ve found something.’

‘So have I.’

‘Oh?’ Now Fran sounded put out.

‘On the computer. What did you find?’

‘There’s an ice-house.’

‘Joined to Creekmarsh by a tunnel.’

‘Oh, bugger,’ said Fran, who never swore. ‘I never should have taught you how to use a computer.’

Libby laughed. ‘I’m so pleased you did,’ she said, ‘although I do waste time on it. Anyway, did you find anything else?’

‘Yes. Did you?’

‘No, that was it, except bits and pieces about the history.’

‘Well, in the library they’ve actually got archives of all sorts of things, how much people were paid, what was ordered for the kitchen, that sort of thing.’

‘And?’

‘There’s mention of a “strong room”. Where do you think that was?’

‘I don’t know. What date was this?’

‘Mid eighteen hundreds. About 1848, I think.’

‘Hmm,’ said Libby. ‘That was when the church was rebuilt.’

‘Has that got anything to do with it?’

‘I don’t know. I’m thinking.’

‘Be careful,’ said Fran.

‘Can you take any notes about that strong room? Or copy the pages? And would there be anything about the pub?’

‘The pub?’

‘The Fox, opposite the turning towards the house. On the history site I found, it said it used to be connected to the church and the house before it was rebuilt.’

‘I’ll go and try. You carry on playing with the Internet. I’ll call you when I’ve finished.’

Libby laughed. ‘What are we like?’ she said. ‘We’re not supposed to be doing this.’